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Contents PAPER 12 THE UNIVERSE OF UNIVERSES THE immensity of the far-flung creation of the Universal Father is beyond our grasp. We can not relate to it through our time and space existence. We can speculate that universes evolve and that all universes contain intelligent beings, including the original universe of all universes. There may be universes inside every black hole in our universe. There may be an infinity of turtles up and down. In principle, we can conceive of material creation as being infinite because the Universal Father is infinite. And being of time and space, we must tell a story where the infinite creator is not yet done. 1. THE UNIVERSE FAMILY TREE The starting point we imagine is complicated. There is a universe that has no end, no beginning and no children universes called the Central Universe. Next to it are seven starting evolutionary points called'' Superuniverses. Together this starting point is called "The Grand Universe." 'Havona, the central universe, is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. This never-beginning, never-ending universe consists of one billion spheres of sublime perfection. At the center of Havona is the stationary and absolutely stabilized ''Isle of Paradise'', surrounded by its twenty-one satellites. The mass content of this central creation is larger than the total known mass of all seven sectors of the grand universe. ''The Seven Superuniverses'' are simply a geographic region consisting of approximately one seventh of the organized and partially inhabited post-Havona creation. ''Nebadon'', our local universe, is one of the newer leaves of the universe tree with a trunk called ''Orvonton'', the seventh superuniverse. More superuniverses are possible. 2. THE DOMAINS OF THE UNQUALIFIED ABSOLUTE When we peer through increasingly powerful telescopes into the mysterious patterns of outer space, we are gazing upon the mighty outworking of the Unqualified Absolute. When we peer through increasingly powerful microscopes into the fog of elementary particles, we are gazing upon the might outworking of the Unqualified Absolute. The boundaries of the speed of light and Plank's constant define the territory that the Unqualified Absolute has given us to grow our personalities. 3. UNIVERSAL PRESENCE CIRCUITS All forms of energy -- material, mindal, or spiritual -- are alike subject to those universal presences. Personality also is responsive -- to the Father's universal presence or circuit; but though this circuit is exclusive to the Father, he is not excluded from the other circuits; the Universal Father is infinite and acts over ''all'' four absolute-circuits in the master universe: :::: 1. The Personality Circuit of the Universal Father. :::: 2. The Spirit Circuit of the Eternal Son. :::: 3. The Mind Circuit of the Conjoint Actor. :::: 4. The Cosmic Circuit of the Isle of Paradise. These four circuits are not related to the nether Paradise force center; they are neither force, energy, nor power circuits. They are absolute ''presence'' circuits and like God, are independent of time and space. 4. SPACE AND MOTION Absolutely nothing is stationary in all the master universe except the very center of Havona, the eternal Isle of Paradise, the center of presence and the circuits out into all creation. The Unqualified Absolute is functionally limited: ::::1. Tthe Conjoint Actor initiates motion ''in'' space. ::::2. The Conjoint Actor may not produce the [[wikipedia:Frame-dragging|motions ''of'' space]]. ::::3. The Universal Absolute does not originate initial motion but does equalize and control the physics of motion. Space is, from the human viewpoint, nothing -- negative; it exists only as related to something positive and nonspatial. Space emerges with information, time, information and energy. Space expands as the original entanglement decreases, locality increases and gravitationally bound objects drift further and further apart. Our universe is expanding faster than the speed of light due to space expansion. This means that more and more galaxies are disappearing. In 4 billion years, our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will merge. Nearby smaller galaxies will start to collapse into the single galaxy while the rest of the galaxies we see in the sky will disappear. 5. SPACE AND TIME Space and time are different things to us by design. Special Relativity and General Relativity enable us to see a glimpse of this design. Space contains and conditions motion. The space occupied by an object moving away from us collapses (shrinks) when looking at it. When the velocity approaches the speed of light, each object thinks the other has disappeared .. space changes. Time involves concepts of simultaneity, event sequences, and causality. As objects move, clocks move faster and slower, simultaneity collapses, causality becomes tenuous, and the sequence of events can change within the separate objects. The mental constructs formed (light cones) when working through these aspects of time force us to begin thinking of time as a form of space. As space shrinks and time looks more like geography, it becomes clear that space and time are the same thing. The fact that our space and time dependent lives depend upon us ''not'' moving relative to each other emphasizes a design focused on relationships. The bit of motion we have accomplished allows us to establish free will, events, personality, and an awareness of both time and space. Light is where space and time emerge. This is why the speed of light is not a barrier but a blessing. This is why we sense the divine in light. Nontemporal space (space without time) theoretically exists, but in Paradise ''area''. Nonspatial time (time without space) exists in mind of the Paradise level of function. Time-conscious ''visitors'' can go to Paradise without sleeping, but they remain creatures of time. Relationships to time do not exist without motion in space, but consciousness of time does. Event sequences can consciously appear in an individuals mind in the the absence of motion. Man's mind is less time-bound than space-bound because of the inherent nature of mind. Even during the days of the earth life in the flesh, though man's mind is rigidly space-bound, the creative human imagination is comparatively time free. But time itself is not genetically a quality of mind. There are three different levels of time cognizance: :::: 1. Mind-perceived time -- consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration. ::::2. Spirit-perceived time -- insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity. ::::3. Personality ''creates'' a unique time sense out of insight into Reality plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration. Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt man has powers of prevision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of self-realization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality. The human personality is not merely a concomitant of time-and-space events; the human personality can also act as the cosmic cause of such events. 6. UNIVERSAL OVERCONTROL The universe, as created by the Unqualified Absolute is unstable, it is not static. Stability is not the result of inertia or doing nothing, but rather the product of balanced energies, co-operative minds, co-ordinated morontias, spirit overcontrol, and personality unification. Stability is wholly and always proportional to divinity. In the physical control of the master universe the Universal Father exercises priority and primacy through the Isle of Paradise; God is absolute in the spiritual administration of the cosmos in the person of the Eternal Son. Concerning the domains of mind, the Father and the Son function co-ordinately in the Conjoint Actor. The Third Source and Center assists in the maintenance of the equilibrium and co-ordination of the combined physical and spiritual energies and organizations by the absoluteness of his grasp of the cosmic mind and by the exercise of his inherent and universal physical and spiritual circuits. Whenever and wherever there occurs a liaison between the material and the spiritual, such a mind phenomenon is an act of the Infinite Spirit. Mind alone can interassociate the physical forces and energies of the material level with the spiritual powers and beings of the spirit level. Physical, intellectual, and spiritual energies leverage each other. When they are unified by personality unpredictable phenomena occurs that requires both experiential Deity and the Absolutes. The universe is highly predictable only in the quantitative or circuit-measurement sense; even the primal physical forces are not responsive circuits, nor are the higher mind meanings and true spirit values of ultimate universe realities. Qualitatively, the universe is not highly predictable as regards new associations of forces, either physical, mindal, or spiritual, although many such combinations become partially predictable when subjected to critical observation. When matter, mind, and spirit are unified by creature personality, the decisions of a freewill being can not be predicted. All phases of primordial force, nascent spirit, and other nonpersonal ultimates appear to react in accordance with certain relatively stable but unknown laws. We characterize them with a predictable probablility which is disconcerting, when encountered in the phenomena of a circumscribed and isolated situation. What is the explanation of this unpredictable freedom of reaction disclosed by these emerging universe actualities? These unknown, unfathomable probabilities -- whether pertaining to the behavior of a primordial unit of force, the reaction of an unidentified level of mind, or the phenomenon of a vast preuniverse in the making in the domains of outer space -- probably disclose the activities of the Ultimate and the presence-performances of the Absolutes, which antedate the function of all universe Creators. We surmise that such amazing versatility and such profound co-ordination signify the presence and performance of the Absolutes, and that such diversity of response in the face of apparently uniform causation discloses the reaction of the Absolutes, not only to the immediate and situational causation, but also to all other related causations throughout the entire master universe. Individuals have their guardians of destiny; planets, systems, constellations, universes, and superuniverses each have their respective rulers who labor for the good of their domains. Havona and even the grand universe are watched over by those intrusted with such high responsibilities. But who fosters and cares for the fundamental needs of the master universe as a whole, from Paradise to the fourth and outermost space level? Existentially such overcare is probably attributable to the Paradise Trinity, but from an experiential viewpoint the appearance of the post-Havona universes is dependent on: :::: 1. The Absolutes in potential. :::: 2. The Ultimate in direction. :::: 3. The Supreme in evolutionary co-ordination. ::::4. The Architects of the Master Universe in administration prior to the appearance of specific rulers. The Unqualified Absolute pervades all space. We are not altogether clear as to the exact status of the Deity and Universal Absolutes, but we know the latter functions wherever the Deity and Unqualified Absolutes function. The Deity Absolute may be universally present but hardly space present. The Ultimate is, or sometime will be, space present to the outer margins of the fourth space level. We doubt that the Ultimate will ever have a space presence beyond the periphery of the master universe, but within this limit the Ultimate is progressively integrating the creative organization of the potentials of the three Absolutes. 7. THE PART AND THE WHOLE There is operative throughout all time and space an inexorable and impersonal law which is equivalent to the function of a cosmic providence. Mercy characterizes God's attitude of love for the individual; impartiality motivates God's attitude toward the total. The will of God does not necessarily prevail in the part -- the heart of any one personality -- but his will does actually rule the whole, the universe of universes. In all his dealings with all his beings it is true that the laws of God are not inherently arbitrary. With our limited vision and finite viewpoint, the acts of God must often appear to be dictatorial and arbitrary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well. We observe that God does the same thing in the same way, repeatedly, simply because that is the best way to do that particular thing in a given circumstance; and the best way is the right way, and therefore does infinite wisdom always order it done in that precise and perfect manner. We should also remember that nature is not the exclusive act of Deity; other influences are present in those phenomena which man calls nature. It is repugnant to the divine nature to suffer any sort of deterioration or ever to permit the execution of any purely personal act in an inferior way. It should be made clear, however, that, ''if'', in the divinity of any situation, in the extremity of any circumstance, in any case where the course of supreme wisdom might indicate the demand for different conduct -- if the demands of perfection might for any reason dictate another method of reaction, a better one, then and there would the all-wise God function in that better and more suitable way. That would be the expression of a higher law, not the reversal of a lower law. God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronicity of the repetition of his own voluntary acts. There is no conflict among the laws of the Infinite; they are all perfections of the infallible nature; they are all the unquestioned acts expressive of faultless decisions. Law is the unchanging reaction of an infinite, perfect, and divine mind. The acts of God are all volitional notwithstanding this apparent sameness. In God there "is no variableness neither shadow of changing." But all this which can be truly said of the Universal Father cannot be said with equal certainty of all his subordinate intelligences or of his evolutionary creatures. Because God is changeless, therefore we can depend, in all ordinary circumstances, on his doing the same thing in the same identical and ordinary way. God is the assurance of stability for all created things and beings. He is God; therefore he changes not. And all this steadfastness of conduct and uniformity of action is personal, conscious, and highly volitional, for the great God is not a helpless slave to his own perfection and infinity. God is not a self-acting automatic force; he is not a slavish law-bound power. God is neither a mathematical equation nor a chemical formula. He is a freewill and primal personality. He is the Universal Father, a being surcharged with personality and the universal fount of all creature personality. The will of God does not uniformly prevail in the heart of the God-seeking material mortal, but if the time frame is enlarged beyond the moment to embrace the whole of the first life, then does God's will become increasingly discernible in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led children of God. And then, if human life is further enlarged to include the morontia experience, the divine will is observed to shine brighter and brighter in the spiritualizing acts of those creatures of time who have begun to taste the divine delights of experiencing the relationship of the personality of man with the personality of the Universal Father. The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves ''each'' individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves ''every'' individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood. The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity. The Father's love glorifies each child of God, illuminating each member of the celestial family, sharply silhouetting the unique nature of each personal being against the impersonal levels that lie outside the fraternal circuit of the Father of all. The love of God strikingly portrays the transcendent value of each will creature, unmistakably reveals the high value which the Universal Father has placed upon each and every one of his children from the highest creator personality of Paradise status to the lowest personality of will dignity among the savage tribes of men in the dawn of the human species on some evolutionary world of time and space. This very love of God for the individual brings into being the divine family of all individuals, the universal brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father. And this brotherhood, being universal, is a relationship of the whole. Brotherhood, when universal, discloses not the ''each'' relationship, but the ''all'' relationship. Brotherhood is a reality of the total and therefore discloses qualities of the whole in contradistinction to qualities of the part. Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons. The part profits or suffers in measure with the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the progress of the whole, so the progress of the part. The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood. It is a mystery that God is a highly personal self-conscious being with residential headquarters, and at the same time personally present in such a vast universe and personally in contact with such a well-nigh infinite number of beings. That such a phenomenon is a mystery beyond human comprehension should not in the least lessen our faith. Do not allow the magnitude of the infinity, the immensity of the eternity, and the grandeur and glory of the matchless character of God to overawe, stagger, or discourage; for the Father is not very far from any one of us; he dwells within us, and in him do we all literally move, actually live, and veritably have our being. Even though the Paradise Father functions through his divine creators and his creature children, he also enjoys the most intimate inner contact with you, so sublime, so highly personal, that it is even beyond my comprehension -- that mysterious communion of the Father fragment with the human soul and with the mortal mind of its actual indwelling. Knowing what you do of these gifts of God, you therefore know that the Father is in intimate touch, not only with his divine associates, but also with his evolutionary mortal children of time. The Father indeed abides on Paradise, but his divine presence also dwells in the minds of men. Even though the spirit of a Son be poured out upon all flesh, even though a Son once dwelt with us in the likeness of mortal flesh, even though the seraphim personally guard and guide us, how can any of these divine beings of the Second and Third Centers ever hope to come as near to us or to understand us as fully as the Father, who has given a part of himself to be in us, to be our real and divine, even our eternal, self? 8. MATTER, MIND, AND SPIRIT "God is spirit," but Paradise is not. The material universe is always the arena wherein take place all spiritual activities; spirit beings and spirit ascenders live and work on physical spheres of material reality. The bestowal of cosmic force, the domain of cosmic gravity, is the function of the Isle of Paradise. All original force-energy proceeds from Paradise, and the matter for the making of untold universes now circulates throughout the master universe in the form of a supergravity presence which constitutes the force-charge of pervaded space. Whatever the transformations of force in the outlying universes, having gone out from Paradise, it journeys on subject to the never-ending, ever-present, unfailing pull of the eternal Isle, obediently and inherently swinging on forever around the eternal space paths of the universes. Physical energy is the one reality which is true and steadfast in its obedience to universal law. Only in the realms of creature volition has there been deviation from the divine paths and the original plans. Power and energy are the universal evidences of the stability, constancy, and eternity of the central Isle of Paradise. The bestowal of spirit and the spiritualization of personalities, the domain of spiritual gravity, is the realm of the Eternal Son. And this spirit gravity of the Son, ever drawing all spiritual realities to himself, is just as real and absolute as is the all-powerful material grasp of the Isle of Paradise. But material-minded man is naturally more familiar with the material manifestations of a physical nature than with the equally real and mighty operations of a spiritual nature which are discerned only by the spiritual insight of the soul. As the mind of any personality in the universe becomes more spiritual -- Godlike -- it becomes less responsive to material gravity. Reality, measured by physical-gravity response, is the antithesis of reality as determined by quality of spirit content. Physical-gravity action is a quantitative determiner of nonspirit energy; spiritual-gravity action is the qualitative measure of the living energy of divinity. What Paradise is to the physical creation, and what the Eternal Son is to the spiritual universe, the Conjoint Actor is to the realms of mind -- the intelligent universe of material, morontial, and spiritual beings and personalities. The Conjoint Actor reacts to both material and spiritual realities and therefore inherently becomes the universal minister to all intelligent beings, beings who may represent a union of both the material and spiritual phases of creation. The endowment of intelligence, the ministry to the material and the spiritual in the phenomenon of mind, is the exclusive domain of the Conjoint Actor, who thus becomes the partner of the spiritual mind, the essence of the morontia mind, and the substance of the material mind of the evolutionary creatures of time. Mind is the technique whereby spirit realities become experiential to creature personalities. And in the last analysis the unifying possibilities of even human mind, the ability to co-ordinate things, ideas, and values, is supermaterial. Though it is hardly possible for the mortal mind to comprehend the seven levels of relative cosmic reality, the human intellect should be able to grasp much of the meaning of three functioning levels of finite reality: ::::1. ''Matter''. Organized energy which is subject to linear gravity except as it is modified by motion and conditioned by mind. ::::2. ''Mind''. Organized consciousness which is not wholly subject to material gravity, and which becomes truly liberated when modified by spirit. ::::3. ''Spirit''. The highest personal reality. True spirit is not subject to physical gravity but eventually becomes the motivating influence of all evolving energy systems of personality dignity. The goal of existence of all personalities is spirit; material manifestations are relative, and the cosmic mind intervenes between these universal opposites. The bestowal of mind and the ministration of spirit are the work of the associate persons of Deity, the Infinite Spirit and the Eternal Son. Total Deity reality is not mind but spirit-mind -- mind-spirit unified by personality. Nevertheless the absolutes of both the spirit and the thing converge in the person of the Universal Father. On Paradise the three energies, physical, mindal, and spiritual, are co-ordinate. In the evolutionary cosmos energy-matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind, is striving for the mastery. Spirit is the fundamental reality of the personality experience of all creatures because God is spirit. Spirit is unchanging, and therefore, in all personality relations, it transcends both mind and matter, which are experiential variables of progressive attainment. In cosmic evolution matter becomes a philosophic shadow cast by mind in the presence of spirit luminosity of divine enlightenment, but this does not invalidate the reality of matter-energy. Mind, matter, and spirit are equally real, but they are not of equal value to personality in the attainment of divinity. Consciousness of divinity is a progressive spiritual experience. The brighter the shining of the spiritualized personality (the Father in the universe, the fragment of potential spirit personality in the individual creature), the greater the shadow cast by the intervening mind upon its material investment. In time, man's body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (identity) and spirit survive while the body does not. A cosmic reality can be nonexistent in personality experience. And so your Greek figure of speech -- the material as the shadow of the more real spirit substance -- does have a philosophic significance. 9. PERSONAL REALITIES Spirit is the basic personal reality in the universes, and personality is basic to all progressing experience with spiritual reality. Every phase of personality experience on every successive level of universe progression swarms with clues to the discovery of alluring personal realities. Man's true destiny consists in the creation of new and spirit goals and then in responding to the cosmic allurements of such supernal goals of nonmaterial value. Love is the secret of beneficial association between personalities. You cannot really know a person as the result of a single contact. You cannot appreciatingly know music through mathematical deduction, even though music is a form of mathematical rhythm. The number assigned to a telephone subscriber does not in any manner identify the personality of that subscriber or signify anything concerning his character. Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something ''more'' than, or something ''different''''' from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance -- liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology. Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn. Your religion is becoming real because it is emerging from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition. Your philosophy struggles for emancipation from dogma and tradition. Your science is engaged in the agelong contest between truth and error while it fights for deliverance from the bondage of abstraction, the slavery of mathematics, and the relative blindness of mechanistic materialism. Mortal man has a spirit nucleus. The mind is a personal-energy system existing around a divine spirit nucleus and functioning in a material environment. Such a living relationship of personal mind and spirit constitutes the universe potential of eternal personality. Real trouble, lasting disappointment, serious defeat, or inescapable death can come only after self-concepts presume fully to displace the governing power of the central spirit nucleus, thereby disrupting the cosmic scheme of personality identity. Presented by a Perfector of Wisdom acting by authority of the Ancients of Days.